VA Suicide Prevention Campaign Expands With On-Line Chat Service

September 3, 2009 — ssgtlanger

On July 3, 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs launched a pilot on-line Chat Service, in partnership with Lifeline. The Veterans Chat Service is located at the VA National Suicide Prevention Hotline. Veterans Chat enables Veterans, their families and friends to go online where they can anonymously chat with a trained VA counselor. If the chats are determined to be a crisis, the counselor can take immediate steps to transfer the chatter to the VA Suicide Prevention Hotline, where further counseling and referral services are provided and crisis intervention steps can be taken. The online feature is intended to reach out to all Veterans who may or may not be enrolled in the VA health care system and provide them with online access to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline and provides Veterans with an anonymous way to access VA’s suicide prevention services. Veterans (and family members or friends) can access Veterans Chat through the Lifeline suicide prevention website.